Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Prompt #490-Untitled

After her unceremonious dismissal from the Wonderbolt Academy, and explicit instructions from Spitfire to not come back unless she fixed her attitude, Lightning Dust knew she couldn’t just go straight back to her home in Vanhoover. She’d be made a laughing stock within five minutes as the pony who got kicked out of the Wonderbolts Academy. For all its reputation of toughness, prior to Lightning, the Academy had never kicked somepony out. Made them quit by constantly upping the difficulty of the tasks, yes. Expulsion, no.

Thus, Lightning instead flew to the east side of Equestria, and eventually neared the coastal city of Fillydelphia. From the air, the town seemed oddly quiet, and as she neared the ground, this was confirmed, as every single house was completely closed up and a few even had boards nailed over the windows. Shrugging, Lighting Dust moved over to a nearby house, and knocked on the door. A few minutes passed before the top half of the door creaked open.

“Can I help you, Miss?”

“Yeah. What they hay is going on here? Why’s every house boarded up like this?” asked Lighting Dust.

“There’s a Wild Storm coming in. A big one. We’re just making sure that everything stays standing.” Lightning Dust glanced over at the seaward horizon, and sure enough, a gigantic mass of black, roiling cloud was there, growing ever larger almost by the minute.

‘How the heck did I miss that on my flight in?’ wondered Lightning Dust, but then she got a terrible, wonderful idea. If she took care of the storm, nopony would care that she’d been kicked out of the Academy. Dispersing a Wild storm was not an easy feat, as the innate weather magic of Equestria was not working in your favour with storms like this. And maybe, the Academy would take her straight back. Take that, Rainbow Dash!

Straightening up, Lightning Dust addressed the pony in front of her. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that storm soon enough, or my name isn’t Lightning Dust!”

“But we already have the weather patrol on it.”

“Pfft. Some amateur cloud buckers can’t deal with this. Like I said, I’ll take care of it.”

“Whatever,” said the other pony, and shut the door in Lightning’s face. Unconcerned with the pony’s response, Lightning left the ground behind, trailing her blue and yellow streak as she rocketed towards the massive storm cell.

*****

Up close, the storm seemed even more intimidating than before, but Lightning dived right in, passing several pegasi who seemed to be aimlessly circling the storm.

‘Amateurs,’ thought Lightning, ‘all of them. Storm like this, you need to hit the centre.’

Navigating blind wasn’t easy in the rough winds of the storm, but Lightning trusted in her senses, and hit the heart of the storm soon enough, only to find herself in the middle of a perfectly calm column of air.

“What the...” that was all the time she had to wonder before her motion carried her through and into the other side. Taken aback by the sudden shift, she couldn’t avoid the lightning bolt that struck her on her back, paralysing her wings, and practically setting her nerves on fire. As she began to fall, she could see a second lightning bolt forming, as if in slow motion, getting ready to finish her off.

The last thing she felt before passing out was a body slamming into hers.

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #490-“Where There’s Thunder”
The prompt: Lightning never strikes the same place twice.

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

Interesting. Very well done.